How to Set Up a Local AI Coding Assistant in VS Code – Free & Private

Short summary

Deploy Continue + Ollama in VS Code for fully local, private AI-assisted coding with zero cloud exposure. Features include Copilot-style tab autocomplete, AI-powered codebase chat, and inline code editing—powered by Qwen2.5 Coder. Your code stays on-machine, completely free ($0 vs $20/month Copilot/Cursor), fully offline, model-agnostic, no vendor lock-in.

• •Continue extension + Ollama = local LLM for VS Code with autocomplete, chat, inline edits—no cloud data leak
• •Zero cost ($0/month), works offline, swap models anytime, no vendor lock-in or subscriptions
• •Hardware: RTX 3090/4090 for Qwen2.5 14B, RTX 3060/4060 (8-12GB) for Qwen2.5 7B quantized

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.